


He Didn't Have to Be

by rebeccaofsbfarm



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Christopher Diaz Has Two Dads, Christopher Diaz is a National Treasure, Christopher's POV, Fluff, God Bless Christopher Diaz, M/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:22:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25093807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebeccaofsbfarm/pseuds/rebeccaofsbfarm
Summary: Throughout his life, Christopher reflects on how Buck came into their lives and how much he means to the both of them.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 35
Kudos: 425





	He Didn't Have to Be

**Author's Note:**

> This is a leftover idea from Katie and I's massive 90's country spiral. It's the fluffiest thing I've written in a minute and I hope you like it.
> 
> Song: He Didn't Have to Be - Brad Paisley

Chris knows that he’s supposed to be asleep, but he can hear the hushed tones as his Abuela leaves for the evening and his dad returns. Chris isn’t supposed to know that his dad was on a date, but even he knows his dad wouldn’t put cologne on for just anyone.

He hears the footsteps leading down the hall, and for a moment he thinks to pretend that he’s asleep so he won’t get in trouble, but then he hears his Dad sigh, and he’s sounds so weary that Chris knows he needs to comfort him.

Dad peeks his head in through the crack in the door, and Chris smiles at him, and slowly his dad mirrors him, though his eyes still look sad. Thoughtfully, he pats the edge of his bed, and Dad laughs before taking the seat he is offered.

“I’m sorry Dad,” he says, reaching out to put his hand on his dad’s arm. He leans into him, then curls onto his side, squeezing into Christopher’s bed next to him. “I know it’s hard.”

“What’s hard?” his dad asks, and Chris averts his eyes. Sometimes he thinks it’s easier for his dad not to know how much he knows about his CP, about what it means for them. But sometimes he wants him to know that he realizes how much his dad has sacrificed.

“Finding somebody that won’t run when you tell them about me,” and his voice is heavy, making sure that his dad knows he’s not just talking about having a kid.

He pulls him into his chest, nearly smothering him, “Buddy, you are the only person I need in this world, you got that?”

“I know, Dad,” he says, squirming out of his hold, trying to make his dad understand how serious he is, but his eyes are teasing. “But I know you’re lonely. I can see it when you don’t think I’m looking. And I want you to be happy. There’s somebody out there that will love both of us. I promise.”

Dad’s face goes serious, and he wipes at his face. Chris has been brought up to know that it’s okay to cry, but he still doesn’t see his dad break very often. They are constantly protecting each other from the burden of their own knowledge, and he can tell that something has given on his Dad’s end.

“Chris, do you know how lucky I am to end up with the greatest kid in the world?” he asks, and he forces a smile onto his face, reaching out to tousle Chris’s curls. “Anybody who can’t see that can get lost, okay?”

“Okay Dad,” Chris answers softly, and then it really is late and he’s been up far too long, so he curls into his dad’s chest and falls asleep.

* * *

He knows his dad is happy. That’s the first thing he notices. His Buck has been hanging out more and more, which Chris is grateful for because when Buck cooks dinner it’s at least palatable. He should be suspicious when they ask him if they can take him out for dinner and a movie, but the three of them have had at least a thousand movie nights, so there’s nothing irregular about the offer.

He agrees, and they determine they will see the latest offering from Marvel. Before they see the movie, they stop for dinner, and Chris insists they all order milkshakes with their hamburgers. His dad is next to him in the booth, and Buck is across from them, spread across the whole seat. He’d thought of Buck as a superhero ever since he’d saved him during the tsunami, but it didn’t hurt that he looked strangely like Captain America when Chris took his glasses off.

They’ve finished their hamburgers and are slowly finishing off their shakes, when Buck leans across the table toward him, looking him straight in the eye. He loves that Buck never treats him like a kid. Buck talks to him like he talks to everyone else, but not like everyone else, like he’s his favorite person.

“Bud, I want to ask you something, and you are 100% allowed to say no, okay?” Buck says, and Chris feels his dad straighten next to him. “Promise me you’ll be honest. You won’t hurt my feelings.”

Chris nods seriously without removing his mouth from the straw, waiting for Buck to ask for his serious opinion. He feels his dad’s arm reach across his shoulders along the back of the booth, like he’s trying to protect him from something. But there’s no reason to protect him from Buck.

“Chris, would it be okay with you if I moved in with you and your dad?” he asks, and Chris holds his opinion for a moment, offering a rebuttal.

“Where would you sleep?” he asks, very protective of having his own room. Buck turns red and looks at his dad quickly, then back at him.

“About that,” he says, and Chris thinks he sounds pretty nervous, “I was thinking I would sleep in your dad’s room.”

“Like his boyfriend?” he asks, putting the pieces together. He isn’t a baby. He knows how dating works.

He hears his dad snort next to him, “I told you he’s a smart kid.”

“I never said you weren’t,” Buck promises him, reaching across the table to put his large hand over Chris’s smaller one. “But this was confusing for me. I thought your dad was my best friend, and then it turned out I wanted him to be my boyfriend. If it was confusing for me, I thought it might be confusing for you.”

He looks back and forth between his dad and Buck, and he can see them smiling softly at each other. He remembers promising his dad that there was someone out there that would love them both, and he knows that the only person that loves him more than his Buck is his dad. He takes his hand out from beneath Buck’s and taps him firmly on the knuckles.

“So this means I don’t have to pretend to like Dad’s cooking anymore, huh?” Chris shrugs, smiling when he sees their relief. “Buck is way better at it.”

“Hey!” his dad says, mock-offended, like they didn’t fight for seconds every time Buck made dinner.

Buck is laughing, and he slides out from his side of the booth, kneeling on the floor next to Christopher. Chris turns to face him, and Buck’s face settles into something serious, “Chris, I need you to know how much I love your dad. But I also need you to know how much I love you. You are my favorite person in the whole world, and it would mean everything in the world to me if we could be a family, the three of us. Is that okay with you?”

It had been so long since Christopher had two parents at the same time that the concept almost seems foreign, but he realizes that Buck has been family for longer than he realized. He nods, reaching out his arms, letting Buck wraps his long arms around him, and just like he had known during the tsunami, Chris knows that he’s safe with Buck, and that he always will be.

“I love you too, Buck.”

* * *

“Hold on guys, I need snacks,” Chris says into the microphone, before taking off his headset. It’s the perfect Saturday night playing video games. Dad and Buck are having a night in, so he tries to circumvent the living room to avoid seeing them make out.

The last time he’d walked in on them, they’d been heading south of the border, and they’d had a very awkward conversation about sex and boundaries, which had ended with him shouting, “Dad, I am thirteen and I have the internet. Please shut up.”

He steps out of his bedroom as quietly as possible, leaving his crutches behind in the interest of stealth. He makes it halfway down the hallway before he can hear their conversation, and he tries not to eavesdrop, but then he overhears what they’re talking about.

Unbeknownst to either of them, they had both sat him down this week and asked if they could propose to the other. Christopher had rolled his eyes, asking them what had taken so long. Buck had been living with them for almost four years. It was embarrassing that he was still only Dad’s Boyfriend.

As in: Who’s picking you up? My Dad’s Boyfriend. Who signed your permission slip? My Dad’s Boyfriend. Christopher, you seem to be bleeding quite a lot. Who should we call? My Dad’s Boyfriend.

He’s distracted by listening to them fumble over their words and accidently hits the squeaky board in the hall. The conversation stops, and Dad calls out, “Chris?”

“Shit,” he says under his breath, then comes out into the open. “Didn’t mean to interrupt. Just looking for something to eat.”

Buck tries to stand, offering to make him something, but Chris holds up a hand to stop him, “No, absolutely not. You two have put this off long enough. Say what you were going to say. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

His dads, because that’s what they are if he’s being honest, look at one another in confusion, and he hopes they get their shit together in his absence, because he walks into the kitchen and grabs a piece of pie out of the fridge and counts to three-hundred before heading back out to the living room.

“Gross,” he says when he finds them kissing, but there’s no disgust behind his statement. Each of them is wearing a simple band, one in yellow gold, and one in white. They look up from their kiss and reach toward him. He tries to evade them, but he’s too slow, “Sure, pick on the kid with CP because you know he can’t get away.”

They turn into a jumble of limbs in the most confusing hug of his life, but all he can feel is their joy, and the love he feels for both of them.

* * *

“Well, Christopher, that was dumb,” he tells himself, out loud, as he stumbles to the curb in front of his friends Devin’s house. He already wasn’t particularly steady on his feet, and three beers and as many shots didn’t help his gait. His friends refused to leave, so he did the only thing he could think of. He went out into the fresh air, found a place on the curb, and waited for his ride.

The Jeep pulls up to the curb, and when Buck gets out, he’s pretty mad. He stands in front of Chris with his hands on his hips, waiting for an explanation.

“Bet I know why you didn’t call your dad,” he observes, then helps Chris to his feet, lets him lean on his shoulder as he settles him into the passenger seat. “God Chris, you’re smarter than this.”

Chris snorts, leaning back into his seat, and Buck huffs in frustration, “If you’re so proud of yourself, maybe we should call your dad and get it over with. Hm?”

He reaches for his phone and Chris intercepts him, “I’m sorry. Please, don’t tell him.”

Buck retracts his hand, but gives Chris a sideways glance, suggesting he requires a confession before he will promise anything.

“Look, everyone else was doing it,” Buck opens his mouth to interrupt but Chris stops him. “Which is a stupid reason, but usually I can’t do what everyone else is doing okay? I can’t play sports and nobody wants to date the guy with CP. So yeah, I drank. Because for once I could do the normal teenage thing, without being the crippled kid.”

Buck sighs and pulls into an all-night drive thru. He orders an army’s worth of cheeseburgers and four large drinks. He piles all of it on Chris’s lap, and directs him to start drinking.

“What are we doing?” Chris asks, digging in the bag for a cheeseburger. Not everything about being drunk is great, but it tastes like the best cheeseburger he’s ever had. Buck merges onto the freeway and holds his hand out for a cheeseburger.

“We’re going to drive around until you’re sober enough not to raise suspicion,” he points to the food in Chris’s lap. “Caffeine and carbs, to absorb the booze and flush it out. Get to work.”

“We’re about to talk about this aren’t we?” he asks, but dutifully drinks one of the large Cokes.

Buck glances at him before his eyes return to the road, “I know I’m not your Dad, but I want you to remember something. Unlike your dad, I chose to be here. I saw you for the first time and thought, ‘Man, I want to see that kid grow up.’

“And Chris, I’m not going to bullshit you, I have no idea what it’s like to have CP. Though I have to tell you, when somebody spread it around at my school that my birthmark was ‘eye herpes’ it was not the high point of my life.”

“It’s not the same,” Chris mutters, angrily biting into another cheeseburger.

“Chris, I know it’s not,” Buck tells him softly, reaching between the seats to put a hand on his knee. “But man, if I could tell you how much promise you have. How great your future could be. When I was your age, I didn’t think I deserved love. And then I met your dad, and I met you, and god, I didn’t know how much _I_ could love until I had you two in my life.

“This family, my life with you guys, is more than my wildest dreams. So don’t give up yet. There’s so much more to life than high school. I _promise_.”

Chris looks away from him, gazing out the window at passing billboards and tries to hide the motion of wiping a tear from his cheek.

“I love you Buck,” he admits, and a hand reaches out to clasp his shoulder. He turns to see that there’s a tear in Buck’s eye too.

“I love you too kid,” he says, then points to the bag. “Now pass me another burger.”

* * *

“Dad, did you get it?” Chris asks, on the phone with his father. He catches the eye of Elena, his fiancée, across the living room. He’s leaned against his kitchen counter, long legs in front of him, with his crutches next to him. He imagines his dad in much the same position.

“It’s right here,” he says. “Came in the mail today. Want me to open it?”

“Actually Dad,” Chris hedges. “Is Buck there? I think he should see it first.”

He hears his dad call out for Buck with the phone pressed to his chest, and there’s a scuffle before Buck’s voice comes over the line, “Hey kid, what’s up?”

“The invitations came in. I want you to see how they turned out,” Chris says, sharing a smile with his fiancée. He’d explained how important this was to him, and she had agreed. They’d held back the other invitations another week, just to keep it a surprise.

He hears the sound of tearing paper, and then the sound of the phone being set down on the marble counter. He grins from ear to ear, and when the phone is picked up again, it’s his dad.

“Oh Chris, you don’t know how much this means to him,” he says, and he sounds teary, which suggests that Buck is losing it.

“Of course I do,” he refutes, glancing at his own copy of the invitation. “That’s why I did it.”

His eyes scroll down the elegant calligraphy, reading the words that mean so much to Buck.

_Mr. Edmundo and Mr. Evan Diaz_

_cordially invite you to the wedding of their son,_

_Christopher Edmundo Diaz_

_To_

_Elena Leona Estevez_

_Daughter of Carlos and Sofia Estevez_

“Dad, can you tell Buck I love him?” he says, and he can hear an argument on the other side of the phone before Buck comes on, his voice shaky.

“Thank you, Chris,” he tells him, his voice breaking with emotion. “This means a lot.”

“I just want you to know that just because I don’t call you Dad, doesn’t mean you aren’t my dad,” Chris tells him, getting emotional himself. Elena crosses the room to lean against him. “I’m so lucky you came into our lives. You make Dad so happy, and you’ve never treated me as less than your own. I love you.”

“I love you too, son,” he says, and it’s the first time he’s called him that out loud, but he’s been proving as much for years. Chris has to hang up before he starts to cry again.

* * *

Chris can’t help but feel complete as he holds his daughter in his arms. Elena had been incredible, and even now her eyes flutter open every few moments to check on them, to be sure they’re still there. He reaches out to take her hand, holding his daughter in the crook of his arm, “Good work mom.”

She chuckles sleepily, then closes her eyes again. Her parents are on their way from Sacramento, and he’d called his as they were heading to the hospital. His daughter had made a quick arrival to the world, totally unlike his own, and he silently thanked his mother in heaven for gifting him this life and this moment with his own child. He hadn’t always considered it a blessing, but here in this moment it was enough.

There’s a soft knock on the door, and Chris finds his dads standing in the doorway. Dad has a giant teddy bear, larger than his newborn baby girl, and Buck has the largest bouquet of flowers he’s ever seen. Elena stirs, sitting up to receive visitors, and she reaches out, for a hug from Buck or the flowers he isn’t sure. Elena is partial to Buck. They share recipes back and forth all the time.

His dad leans over his shoulder and reaches out a finger to examine his granddaughter’s tiny fingernails. He shushes her as she stirs, and he murmurs absently, “I can’t believe you were ever this small.”

“Me either,” Chris admits, then notices Buck hanging back, his anticipation obvious in the set of his limbs. “Does Grandpa want to hold her?”

“Can I?” he asks hesitantly, then steps forward. Chris lifts his daughter in his arms to transfer her into Buck’s arms. She looks even tinier in his huge arms. He coos, “Hello my sweet girl. What are we calling you?”

Buck is so focused on his new grandchild that he doesn’t notice the look the others share, until finally their silence makes him suspicious. After searching their eyes, he settles on Chris, who smirks.

“So, I know you never liked your first name,” he admits, “but I figured it might work better for a girl.”

Eddie reaches out to steady his arms as Buck looks at him confused, “What do you mean?”

“Well, you took our name, so I’m giving my daughter yours,” Chris smiles, and Buck reacts exactly as he hoped, curling around the bundle in his arms. “Evan Buckley Diaz, meet Evan Lucia Diaz. Hopefully she can get more use out of the name than you did.”

Buck looks from Christopher to Elena, who nods approvingly. It had been Christopher’s idea, but she was a quick convert. They’d checked with his dad to make sure, and he’d promised to keep it a surprise, until this moment, when Buck holds his namesake to his chest and lets the tears flow. She starts to stir, sensing his distress, and Eddie steps in to take her to Elena.

As soon as his arms are free, Buck has crossed the room, smothering his full-grown son in his still almost super-human embrace. Christopher hugs him back as hard as he can.

“I don’t deserve this,” Buck murmurs into his shoulder. “But I’m honored.”

“She is as lucky to have you as a grandfather as I was to have you as father. I know it wasn’t always easy, but you are the best thing that ever happened to our family, and I want to make sure you remember that. So now every time you see Evan, I want you to remember how important you are to me, and to this family. Okay, Dad?”

On instinct, Buck glances at his husband, but he shakes his head and nods toward Christopher. Chris can see the realization cross Buck’s face as he accepts the term for the first time, tries it on, lets it sit with him a while. He has always called him Buck, my Buck if he was feeling affectionate, but he wants to be sure that he knows, without a doubt, what he is. Buck is as much his Dad as Edmundo Diaz is, and sometimes even more so because he chose to be there. He chose them. And every day, he keeps choosing them.


End file.
